The Toronto International Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for Primetime, the program devoted to television premieres that the festival debuted last year.

Five television premieres will be screened in the program, including three episodes of Jay McCarrol and Matt Johnson’s nirvanna the band the show, which the festival previously announced.

The Canadian series will world premiere at the fest, as will Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror (U.K./South Africa), the Peabody Award-winning series that explores society’s technology paranoia. Two episodes of the series, directed by Owen Harris and Joe Wright, will be screened.

The first three episodes of season three of Jill Soloway’s Transparent (U.S.) will also world bow at the fest, with episodes directed by Soloway and Silas Howard. The new season of the series follows the Pfefferman family as they embark on very different paths to self-discovery.

Two episodes of Tuko Macho (Kenya), created and directed by Jim Chuchu, will be presented. The procedural crime thriller follows the titular terrorist group as they kidnap criminals from Nairobi and ask the public, via the internet, whether the criminals should live or die. Viewers vote alongside the fictional internet audience to determine the fate of the criminals in the next episode.

Lastly, all eight episodes of Štěpán Hulík’s mystery miniseries Wasteland (Czech Republic) will also bow. The series, directed by Ivan Zachariáš and Alice Nellis, follows the mayor of a coal-mining village on the brink of extinction whose daughter mysteriously vanishes.

The festival also announced its industry programming, including its on-stage conversation series, Moguls, which will feature discussions with president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president and COO of the Weinstein Company David Glasser and chairman of Olsberg-SPI, Jonathan Olsberg.

Industry panels announced include “Where Do All the Indies Go?”, which will discuss how to revive the distribution of, and production opportunities for, independent cinema. Mongrel Media’s director of theatrical releasing, Tom Alexander, will speak on the panel, as will Clare Binns, programming and acquisitions director at Picturehouse; Olivier Gauthier-Mercier director of distribution sales at Elevation Pictures and Fred Joubaud, director of international sales and digital acquisitions at Tricon Films & Television. 

The panel “VR/360: Mapping Sustainable Business Models” is co-presented by the Canada Media Fund. The panel will highlight the ways the industry can exploit the financial opportunities presented by VR and will feature panelists David Dexter, operations and business development lead at Sheridan College and Will Maurer, VP of business development, 2D VFX & VR at Legend.

The festival also announced its Masterclass and Doc Conference panels, including talks with Mira Nair and Jonathan Demme.

In other TIFF news today, the festival announced that it would go ahead with the screening of Birth of a Nation, despite a controversy surrounding the personal life of its writer/director Nate Parker that sparked industry speculation the film would be dropped from TIFF’s lineup.

“TIFF is proud to help bring Birth of a Nation and the important story it tells to audiences. We will present the film as planned,” said a spokesperson for the festival in a statement.

With Canadian producer Bron Studios on board as one of four producers, The Birth of a Nation made its world premiere at Sundance earlier this year, and sold to Fox Searchlight for USD$17.5 million.

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